Pope Pius XI and the Special Creation of St. Adam

One of the wonderful things about the Kolbe apostolate has been the way that members of our leadership team have been inspired to research different topics relevant to our mission, resulting in all kinds of fruitful discoveries.  In recent months, researcher Christian Bergsma has brought to our attention a document that highlights the Church leadership’s vigorous defense of the literal historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis well into the twentieth century.  In this article we will focus on a treatise^[1] written by the Rev. Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, towards the end of the nineteenth century.  Though he wrote it before becoming pope, Pius XI defended this work during his pontificate, according to his close friend Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini:

Our Holy Father, Pope Pius XI, in private audiences, from time to time recalled with pleasure this work of his (“which cost him no little labor”), and reconfirmed his conclusions.^[2]

Theological Arguments for the Special Creation of Adam

Dr. Kenneth Miller is typical of Catholic intellectuals who teach our young people that the Fathers and Doctors of the patristic era did not read Genesis as history and that this is a recent, “fundamentalist” misinterpretation, stating:

Great theologians of the early centuries of the Christian era, like Saint Augustine, did not read Genesis as history. It’s only in the last hundred years, mostly in the United States, that you have people coming up with a radically different view.

As the recipient of the Laetare medal at Notre Dame University in 2014, “the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics,” according to Notre Dame’s president, Michael O. Garvey, one would think that Dr. Miller would be able back up his claims, but St. Augustine himself made clear that he agreed with the rest of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that Genesis is written “from beginning to end in the style of history.”  In keeping with this historical interpretation of Genesis, at the beginning of his treatise, the future Pope Pius XI sets forth his plan to demonstrate the direct and immediate creation of the body of St. Adam, first, from theology and then from natural science.  He asks:

What is to be held of the first origin of man as regards the body, according to faith and sound theology?

The answer is this: It is clear from divine revelation that the first parents, not only regarding the soul, but also regarding the body, were formed by God himself, not by simple concurrence, but by direct and immediate action, although not creative.

Explaining the phrase, “although not creative,” Christian Bergsma notes:

The Literal and Obvious Sense of Scripture Must Be Believed

Like the Fathers and Doctors before him, the future Pope Pius XI takes as his starting point that the sacred history of Genesis gives a divinely-inspired account of the creation of the first human beings in which the literal and obvious sense should be believed unless it would detract from “purity of life or soundness of doctrine.” In the words of St. Augustine:

In the first place, then, we must show the way to find out whether a phrase is literal or figurative. And the way is certainly as follows: Whatever there is in the Word of God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as figurative.^[5]

Using these criteria, Christian Bergsma rightly poses and answers a critical question:

Is the formation of the body from mud impossible to reconcile with purity of life or sound doctrine? Certainly not. Pope Leo XIII likewise cites “the rule so wisely laid down by St. Augustine - not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires…”^[6] Does reason or necessity compel us to believe that an all-powerful God could not create a body from mud? Certainly not! Therefore, we ought to take the words literally.

The Age of the Universe

Having established that the direct and immediate creation of Adam, body and soul, must be believed as, at a minimum, Catholic doctrine, if not, as some authorities believe, Catholic Faith, Ratti addresses the question of the timing of Adam’s creation:

It remains to say a few things about the antiquity of human origin. Holy Scripture nowhere expressly presents a complete chronology which extends to the creation of Adam; but what it sparsely reports presents no little difficulty, especially if one considers the discrepancies between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint and Samaritan versions; but the Vulgate version follows the Hebrew text.— Even greater and far more numerous discrepancies occur among the Fathers and Ecclesiastical Writers. Cardinal Meignan counts one hundred and fifty different calculations, none of which can be called reprobate; in fact, Des Vignoles collected more than two hundred different indications of the time from Adam to Christ, the minimum of which he counts as 3483 years, the maximum as 6984. It is true that in all the aforesaid calculations, a common foundation was sought in the Holy Scriptures themselves. For, after certain minor difficulties, it was seen that the following numbers of years could be gathered from inspired books.

From Adam to Noah’s flood:

according to the Vulgate and Hebrew text… 1656

according to the Samaritan text… … … … 1306

according to the Septuagint… … … … … … 2242

From Noah’s flood to Abraham’s birth:

according to the Vulgate… … … … …292 or 293

according to the Samaritan text… … … … … 942

according to the Septuagint… … … … … … 1183

From Abraham to Christ’s birth:

with hardly a few decades of difference… 2190

Having said this, it follows that neither Holy Scripture nor Tradition contains a chronology of the human race that is at least completely defined.  Here again, it is certainly possible to follow any of the chronologies received here and there in the Church.

This is a remarkable passage—remarkable because we find the future Pope Pius XI defending the common teaching of all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that the Scriptures provide a basis, though not a precise formula, for calculating universal chronology, when Catholic intellectuals were abandoning this teaching in droves in the name of “science.”  As Christian Bergsma observes:

Evolutionism Refuted

Having established the theological case for the special creation of Adam, body and soul, the future Pope Pius XI turns his attention to the hypothesis of human evolution:

The theory of Transformism or Evolutionism conflicts with the expounded points of doctrine because, as we have said, it is produced to explain the origin of man. This theory, not unknown to the old materialists, was reawakened at the beginning of the present century by the Frenchman Lamarck (1741-1829), cultivated and embellished by the Englishman Darwin (1809-1881), and amplified by the German Häckel. But for brevity and clarity’s sake, some things must be distinguished, namely: the theory itself of the transformation of species; the reasons by which it is said to be supported; the means by which transformation has occurred; finally, the suppositions from which the whole theory proceeds.

The substance of the theory itself, as it is taken here, is reducible to the transformists’ claim that man, at least regarding the body, had his first and immediate origin not from a certain direct  action of God, but from a lower animal through the successive and progressive transformation or evolution of species.

The future Pope correctly identifies the principal arguments in favor of human evolution:

The first reason is anatomical-physiological, and it is based on the similarity between the human body and the bodies of animals (a unit of configuration and arrangement, commonly known as a floor unit). “Nor,” says Darwin, “is it right to believe that so many individuals of the largest of each natural class were created with such apparent, but deceptive, indications of the common filiation of all from one progenitor.” The transformists also combine anatomical similarities with physiological similarities. The second reason is embryogenic; for it is sought from the development of the human fetus (ontogeny), as it recapitulates in its different stages the longest epochs of transformation from species to species (phylogeny). This is that fundamental biogenetic law, thanks to which Häckel congratulates himself, as if he had laid a new foundation for Darwinism and discovered the true efficient causes on which the evolution of all individuals depends.  Finally, the transformists draw a third reason from the presence of certain parts in the human body, which, when appearing completely useless and considered as remains or rudiments of organs that once existed, should be explainable only by admitting the derivation through the transformation of species.

But if one looks for means by the aid of which a transformation of this kind has occurred, the transformists assign more. Indeed, as Lamarck says, along with Häckel, living beings begin from brute matter by spontaneous or heterogeneous generation, and from this they try to explain the first beginning of life in nature. Darwin, however, admitting that he knows nothing about the first beginning of life, refrains from this point.  Lamarck teaches that in order to explain the successive evolution, new organs, whose development and active power are always adequate for exercise or use, should be produced by means of the modification of adjuncts arising from new needs and corresponding efforts; but what has once been acquired in any organism is transmitted and preserved through generation; for life itself always tends toward the growth of living bodies.

Darwin did not reject the means of this kind of evolution, but added several more: namely, natural selection, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest: also, sexual selection, combined with the laws of correlation, heredity, divergence and permanence.

All of these, however, have been seen by some as insufficient, since they present the transformation of species as accomplished only gradually and under the influence of external agents. Retaining the origin of all species from a few primitive forms, these say that new species sometimes appeared suddenly and as if by leaps from the lower ones, and not without the influence of external agents, but mainly due to certain unknown changes inherent in the individuals of a species.

Finally, the suppositions of transformism, insofar as it is extended to man, are two, namely: the variability of species and the enormous, even indefinite antiquity of man; Furthermore, it is clear to everyone that these two [suppositions of the] transformists are utterly wanting.

Now, it seems that these can be said of the expounded theory, namely: there is nothing to prove its reasons; the means are in part arbitrary, in part absurd, but altogether insufficient and inept; the suppositions are either gratuitous or false; finally, the whole assertion of the theory contradicts the certain principles of philosophy and facts discovered in the natural sciences themselves.

Therefore 1^st The reasons of the transformists prove nothing. — The first reason proves nothing; for the similitude, whether anatomical or physiological, between man and brute, is not  as great as the transformists say; and what this similitude really concerns is not scientifically explained through some original typical unity of shape, but both by the conformity of the two into one genus, and also by the different application of the same mechanical laws according to the requirements of diverse cases.

Here the future Pope makes the same observation that biologist Pamela Acker has made on many occasions—namely, that form follows function, so that similar features in diverse organisms, like five-digit extremities in humans and whales, can be explained more reasonably as evidence of a common designer than as evidence of common descent from a one-celled organism.

Nor is the embryogenic system more valid. — In the first place it is gratuitously asserted that the evolution of the human embryo is a short repetition of the long evolution of the species, from which man was finally sprung.

Häckel, who had already arranged the genealogical tree of man (after his own method, of course), discovered so many gaps and contradictions that he was forced to resort to certain falsifications or innovations of embryonic development, which nature itself makes so frequently that indeed Ontogeny itself may be said to consist of a kind of Palingenesis and Cenogenesis (2).20

Next, it is asserted no less gratuitously, but rather completely falsely, that the human embryo undergoes true metamorphoses from one animal form to another, and that true identities prevail between its different successive forms and the final forms of the lower order of animals. In reality, what is being and what can only be affirmed is the gradual development of the embryo and certain successive analogies, which were not unknown to the old Aristotelians. Furthermore, the animal organism, which according to the present natural economy is not suddenly produced perfect, but gradually by concurring secondary causes, from the beginning only predominates the more general characters of animality, and is successively adorned with specific ones; this, being easily understood, suffices to explain the aforementioned similitudes and analogies. Rather, he who admits these true metamorphoses and identities supposes an indifference in the human germ toward the production of any animal; but this is completely at odds with continuous experience. Of course, there is no sufficient explanation of this experience, unless some principle of specific difference is posited in the germ itself.

Hence, if even the greatest embryogenic similarity is admitted, it can only be material and, so to speak, superficial.

Truly, such a similitude as the transformists boast is not to be admitted, as is clear from the most accurate experiments, with several done not many years ago (1876) by Th. Bischoff in the Munich Academy. It is also clear from the many forgeries which the most skilled men of natural science have discovered in Häckel’s painted tables.

Commenting on the fraudulent character of Haeckel’s “proof” for human evolution, Christian Bergsma observes:

Additional Arguments for Evolution Demolished

The future Pope proceeds to demolish the rest of the evolutionists’ principal arguments:

Given these conditions, what the transformists say about the unified animal type and about the universal common derivation on account of the uniformity of the embryonic structure can certainly, to say the least, be turned back against them.

Nor, in short, does the system prove anything from the rudiments [i.e. “vestigial organs”]. – For, in the first place, Darwin contradicts and entangles himself. Indeed, the alleged reduction of the organs to a kind of rudiment is certainly a type of transformation; and the clear explanation of all transformations, according to Darwin is found in the theory of natural selection. But this kind of selection chooses only what is useful and is to be preserved; however, those rudimentary parts are said to be useless. Hence Darwin, as if to excuse himself from such a weak explanation, reverts to non-use. He soon admits that even this medium is inept, and at last takes refuge in the supposition of one progenitor, who obtained these parts in a state of full development. But this is to base the argument on that very thing for which it had been invented to demonstrate. Secondly, the uselessness of the parts in question is falsely assumed. Indeed, in some cases, their usefulness is completely clear.  And if their service is not always known, it is not therefore absolutely deniable; although there is certainly something useful in the fact that these parts correspond to the fundamental structure and harmony of the organism Nor, however, is the transformists’ argument helped in any way by such utilities; its very first foundation is false. For parts of this kind are only abusively called rudimentary. Why is it that, when the frontiers of both history and paleontology are widely explored, those parts are always found in the same state? You will say that in the lower animals they are found more developed. But this does not prove that in the human body there are only the remains or remnants of those same parts, but only that there are homologous parts, and that they are in that degree of perfection which befits the rest of the human organism.

2nd, the means of transformism are in part absurd, in part arbitrary, but altogether insufficient. —The means of spontaneous generation and effort due to necessity [i.e. struggle for existence] are absurd. For indeed the first utterly subverts the most certain idea of life itself, and posits an effect without any greater proportion to the cause, and, without being helped by the support of even a single fact, is perpetually contradicted by experience; especially after the observations made in recent times. Hence this kind of theory is rejected by the greatest naturalists themselves, although they admit on the other hand that no middle ground can be given between spontaneous generation and creation.

Nor is the other means any less absurd; for it is one thing for exercise to perfect the organs, and quite another for it to produce or completely transform them; which is almost the same as saying that the cause is produced from the effect. And why is it, ultimately, that no such transformation or production takes place? They assume a permanent law, but again, why is it that paleontology has revealed no trace of such transformation or production? And more about these below. But what is the benefit, what is the use of the organs during the very slow production or transformation?

The rest of the proposed means of the transformation of species, if not so manifestly absurd, must certainly be called arbitrary. These, in fact, the transformists reduce to one main principle which all the rest serve instrumentally, namely natural selection or election. But firstly, regarding this selection, the fundamental reasoning of Darwin himself is this: “If, as we see, artificial selection is possible in animals, what will not be accomplished by natural selection?”

Now, aside from the fact that this natural selection is not demonstrated, but is assumed, the modifications introduced by artificial selection certainly never affect the species itself

The means of this selection belong either to external circumstances, or to the organism’s unknown and inner causes. But in neither hypothesis can they be admitted as means for the transformation of species. For external circumstances certainly pertain to the existential condition of living things; but the transformationists wrongly confuse the principles of condition and cause. Likewise, daily experience establishes that the influence of external agents never affects the species themselves. Hence, what reason suggests is confirmed, namely that the influence of such agents, as regards the final determination of the effect, is received in different organisms according to the manner of the recipient.

Now it is clear from the fact that they are called unknown that the internal causes of a specific transformation are arbitrarily set. Assuming that organisms have an intrinsic tendency to self-destruction is also an obstacle, however, unless it is falsely assumed that there is no substantial difference between different species.

All this being said, it is clear that all the aforementioned proposed means to the end of transformation must be considered completely insufficient: this Darwin himself acknowledged.

3rd The suppositions by which the whole theory of transformism is laid out are either gratuitous or false.

Gratuitous, to say the least, is the assertion of the transformists about the enormous, indeed indefinite antiquity of man. — For the arguments they bring forward, whether from history, or from astronomy, or from geology, paleontology, and archaeology, together with theories about the progress of our species from a savage state to a more humane one, which the very guardians of antiquity admit, either prove nothing, or they even prove the opposite.

The second supposition concerning the variability of the species is not only gratuitous, but also manifestly false.

Indeed, although within the limits of each species we see almost innumerable varieties arise, the limits of the species themselves cannot always be defined ἐν ἀτόμῳ [literally “in an indivisible unit”], so to speak; yet each species always retains its own particular face, by which it is  undoubtedly distinguished from the rest.

Additionally, there is the constant fact of fecundity between individuals of the same species, and infertility or hybridism between individuals of a different species. Also, there is a perpetual effort on the part of nature toward the purity of the type, so to speak, or to recover what has been lost through simple variations. Adding to these are all the facts mentioned below which overturn the very substance of the theory. Hence it is no wonder that all of the greatest cultivators of science, from the ancients to the most recent, except of course the transformists themselves, have held the stability of species to be the most certain truth of observation and experience.

But as regards the human species in particular, it is absolutely indubitable that it is and always has been one and the same, whatever the transformists may say. There are indeed differences both in color and in shape, chiefly in the head, and also in the tongue. But their conformity in substantial characteristics, whether physical or intellectual and moral, as well as the absence of hybridism, proves that all these things are contained within the limits of certain varieties of the same species. And those genetic variations which do exist are not difficult to explain from the primitive unity of the human family and its propagation throughout the world, without resorting to the transformation of species. This primitive unity and propagation is certainly evident from the histories and traditions of almost all peoples, from the comparative study of languages, and from the weakness of the objections against it.

The Metaphysical Impossibility of Evolution

4th Finally, the whole assertion of transformism contradicts certain principles of philosophy and facts found in the natural sciences themselves.

There are three philosophical principles which transformism contradicts most.

The first is the principle of causality or efficient causes, which forbids positing an effect without a sufficient cause, under penalty of absurdity. And this is what the transformationists do; for they assign no cause, no means of transformation, which does not appear either arbitrary or absurd, as is clear from what has been said.

The second is the principle of final causes, or the teleological principle; which indeed, rightly understood, is absolutely irrefutable; nor are the Darwinists and transformationists able to overcome it, for they admit it in a universal way of speaking, but, having rejected the creative and intelligent cause, they cannot explain it in any way.

Finally, the third principle is the spirituality of the human soul and its essential difference from the soul of beasts; which can only absurdly be said to be derived through transformism, and the production of which must be explained solely through the immediate creative action of God. But our topic is the origin of man regarding the body.

And yet they do not commit themselves to this principle in the least, who, reserving the origin of the soul by creation, think that evolution can be admitted only of the human body. For by virtue of the principle of causality, the generative force, never going beyond using the vegetative and sensitive order, could not introduce into matter that ultimate disposition which is necessary for union, unless it acted as a kind of instrument of the rational soul.

But whatever the ultimate question of law may be, the question of fact must be considered resolved, both by those [facts] which consist of revelation and by those which demonstrate the intrinsic falsity of evolutionism.

Moreover, the facts which contradict the theories of the transformists can be recalled to a double order, as far as they are negative or positive, so to speak. — Among the negative facts we list firstly that there is not even one example of the actual transformation of any species into another, which the leaders of the transformists themselves are forced to acknowledge reluctantly. For if varieties arise naturally or artificially day by day, they never pass beyond the limits of the species. But if one wishes to have those monstrosities and deformities that occur here and there as evidence of evolutionism under the term “atavism”, and not as generally plain and morbid disorders of generation, this [argument] would descend into absurdity due to their nature and variety. To this end they resort to the law of permanence; what is this but the confession of the stability of species? They say that transformations can only be accomplished gradually and over long ages. But why is it that however long history and archeology extend themselves, we always see the same species represented without change? (1)47

Furthermore, not even geology and paleontology, in any or the remotest age of the world, have been able to reveal any trace of evolution, that is, intermediate forms between different species: in fact, the very hope of such a revelation disappeared for Darwin himself, although he admits that such forms should be very numerous according to his theory.

They try to solve the problem with sudden migrations or the destruction of fossil remains. But these gratuitous assertions, or rather falsehoods, are not demonstrated in a single case.

They appeal to a practical lack of knowledge. But this argument proves too much, as it can always be used against any hypothesis; on the contrary, there is no such general lack of knowledge, nor can the perfection of such knowledge ever consist in the destruction of preexisting acquired facts and unquestionable principles.

The contradiction increases if the facts are presented positively. — In the first place there are some more general facts about the first successive appearance of living things. For contrary to what evolutionism would demand, it is evident that many forms abruptly appeared at the same time; and not the least in the sequence of organic perfection; nor was the appearance progressive, except in the highest divisions of organisms, but like a sudden leap.

Then there are specific facts, such as the progressive degradation and diminution of many forms, or their completely distinct existence in and of themselves, so to speak: the absolute extinction of many, or, on the contrary, their persistence in one and the same never-changing type, and many more others than can even be entered here.

Finally, there are some very technical facts which directly concern man himself, which show that he was never more akin to the beast than he is now. These include the bones and skulls of primitive men found in caves, which conform perfectly to the modern types. Here the lacustrine areas are noted, and the records of the three ages, that of stone, of brass, and of iron; which seem to have belonged to a fairly well-proportioned society of men.

After all that’s now been said, the famous Agassiz’s view, which presents the whole Darwinian theory not as a legitimate development from the data of modern science, but as a certain preconceived notion, will certainly seem justified.

The Status Quo Ante Scopes

As we approach the centenary of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, the mass media are already gearing up to celebrate this “victory” of modern science over “fundamentalist” Christianity.  It is quite remarkable to reflect on the fact that the reigning Pope at the time of the Scopes Trial had successfully defended the traditional doctrine of creation, thoroughly refuted the claims of the evolutionists, and stood by his work at the very time when most Catholic intellectuals in the United States and Europe were either embracing theistic evolution or, at best, half-heartedly defending the traditional doctrine of creation.

In 1925, the Tennessee Legislature passed the Butler Act prohibiting the teaching of human evolution in its public schools.  When opponents of the law persuaded a physical education teacher to violate the law by teaching from a textbook that taught human evolution, one of the leading protestant populist political leaders, William Jennings Bryan, agreed to prosecute the case and appealed to Catholic and protestant leaders alike to come to his support.  With the death of Pope St. Pius X, enforcement of the Congregation of the Index’s 1878 ruling that evolution could not be reconciled with Christian doctrine effectively came to an end—as did a straightforward interpretation of the rulings of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.  Just one month before the Scopes Trial, Jesuit Father Francis LeBuffe argued in the pages of Commonweal Magazine that the 1909 responses of the PBC prohibited Catholics from entertaining the hypothesis of the evolution of the human body from lower life-forms.  But neither he nor any of the minority of like-minded conservative Catholic theologians in the U.S. seems to have been willing to answer Bryan’s call for support for his defense of Tennessee’s right to forbid the teaching of human evolution in the public schools.

The effective silencing of Catholic criticism of the mass media’s push for the teaching of evolution as fact in all government schools helped to pave the way for one of the greatest abuses of natural science in the history of the world, as virtually every argument in support of the evolutionary hypothesis assembled by Darrow’s defense team is now acknowledged to have been totally bogus, even by the evolution-believing scientific establishment.  As early as 1922, the American Association for the Advancement of Science had passed a resolution that “the evidences in favor of the evolution of man are sufficient to convince every scientist of note in the world.”  Darrow deposed some of the most eminent “scientists of note” in the United States in advance of the trial, so that he would be ready to present the overwhelming evidence for the hypothesis of human evolution.   Although these depositions were never actually introduced as evidence during the trial, it is still highly instructive to examine them, to see just how flimsy the evidence touted as convincing to “every scientist of note” actually was.

This is not the place to consider all the alleged evidence for evolution in the depositions collected by Clarence Darrow, but it is worth noting that Darrow brought a plaster cast of the Piltdown Man skull to the trial.  From the day in 1912 when its discoverers announced that they had found a definite missing link between apes and humans, The New York Times launched the “accepted narrative” on Piltdown Man with the modest headline, “"Darwin Theory is Proved True”—not “supported,” “substantiated,” or even “confirmed”—but “proved true”!  In 1931, The New York Times underscored the all but universal acceptance of this “proof” of Darwin’s theory with an article on one of the most famous paleontologists of his age, Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935), who pontificated from his positions at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History that humans had evolved in Europe, and, specifically, in England! From 1934 until 1952, two-thirds of all biology textbooks in the United States hailed “Piltdown Man” as fossil proof of man’s evolution from a one-celled organism through hundreds of millions of years of “struggle for existence.”  It was only in 1953 that a careful examination of the Piltdown man skull revealed that it was a fraud.

Fr. John Augustine Ryan and the Catholic Response to the Scopes Trial

The evolutionists’ legal response to the Butler Act prohibiting the teaching of human evolution was handled by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  When a teacher was found willing to violate the law, and William Jennings Bryan offered to prosecute the case, the ACLU received an offer from superstar attorney Clarence Darrow to handle the defense.  Moral theologian Fr. John Augustine Ryan was the only Catholic member of the ACLU board at the time, and he told the ACLU president Roger Baldwin, “I can’t object to your going into a case like this.  I don’t care where the body comes from, as long as the soul is recognized as the creation of God.”

It is worth taking a few moments to reflect on this statement from a “rising star” among Catholic intellectuals in the U.S. almost a hundred years ago—a statement that finds an echo in the writings of the overwhelming majority of Catholic intellectuals today.  On the one hand, Fr. Ryan’s opinion has become so commonplace among Catholic thinkers that it is hard to grasp the potential for harm that his statement contains.  On the other hand, a serious reflection on the negative implications of his statement should lead any informed Catholic to some deeply disturbing considerations.  Indeed, Fr. Ryan’s statement ought to have raised the specter of a kind of rising neo-gnosticism within Catholic intellectual circles, of the very sort that the Magisterium had sought to eradicate once and for all with the Firmiter decree of the Fourth Lateran Council against the heresy of the Albigensian-Catharist heretics.

The Albigensian heretics had denied the special creation of the various kinds of plants, animals, and even of the human body, thus rationalizing sexual immorality on the ground that it mattered little what men did with their bodies, since the soul was the only part of man that was directly created by God.  Like many of today’s theistic evolutionists, Fr. Ryan and other rising stars in the intellectual firmament of the early twentieth century focused on social justice while withdrawing their support for the foundations of social justice in the traditional understanding of natural law.  The creation of man as man and woman as woman with a stable human nature established the norms of human sexual morality for all times and places.  The widespread acceptance of human evolution by Catholic intellectuals like Fr. Ryan destroyed this foundation and eventually led to the acceptance of homosexuality, contraception, transgenderism, and other perversions, since the human body of man and woman in its original form was no longer seen as specially-created for the soul as the “form of the body”—as defined at the Ecumenical Council of Vienne in 1312—but as a transient physical habitation formed through material processes over long ages of time.

Evolving human nature is defined as much by its alleged evolutionary ancestors and close relatives—like the chimpanzees and bonobos—as by the state of its physical organization at any particular point in its evolutionary history.  Worse still, to the extent that Catholic intellectuals retained any respect for the natural law, Fr. Ryan’s perspective led to the practice of regarding fallen human nature as the norm, rather than the original human nature specially created by God in the beginning.

Pseudo-Science-Tsunami and the Curse of Galileo

Catholic intellectuals were not only afraid to be associated with protestant fundamentalists.  They were also intimidated by secular intellectuals like Edwin Conklin at Princeton University who reminded the readers of the New York Times shortly before the Scopes Trial of the Catholic Church’s role in retarding scientific progress in the Galileo Affair.  To this day the myth of the Catholic Church’s role in the alleged obstruction of scientific progress through her persecution of Galileo is so widely-believed that a mere mention of Galileo suffices to silence most Catholics who dare to question the consensus view on any topic related to the origins of man and the universe.  That this was already the case one hundred years ago is apparent from the ease with which pseudo-scientific claims were passed off as hard evidence for the evolutionary hypothesis during the Scopes Trial with scarcely a word of protest from Catholic intellectuals.

The chasm that separated the Catholic faith of Pope Pius XI in 1925 from the modernist consensus that has gradually suppressed the expression of that faith in the United States and Europe has only continued to grow.  And yet Pope Pius XI’s refutation of the evolutionary hypothesis is as true today as when he penned it.  Not only have the principles that he invoked been thoroughly vindicated.  The empirical evidence has mounted up in contradiction to the predictions of the evolutionists and in harmony with the literal historical truth of Genesis which the future Pope Pius XI so ably defended.

In light of the Pope’s adherence to the true Catholic doctrine of creation, it seems fitting that he was chosen by the Queen of Heaven to receive her request for the Consecration of Russia in 1929, to prevent the spread of evolutionism and the other “errors of Russia” throughout the world.  Indeed, it would seem that some strong modernist influence must already have entered into the circle of the Pope’s advisors, preventing him from acting decisively according to his stated beliefs in response to the Cristero War in Mexico, the Scopes Trial in the United States, and the requests of Our Lady of Fatima. How different the world would be today, if Pope Pius XI had been free to act according to the Truth that he had always believed and defended so well in these three matters!

Footnotes:

[1] De hominis Origine Quoad Corpus, in Msgr. Frederick Sala, Institutiones positive-scholasticæ Theologiæ Dogmaticæ Tomus II: De Deo Uno et Trino — De Deo Creatore (1899), pgs. 197-211. For the original Latin see here. For English and Latin side-by-side, see here.

[2] Ruffini, The Theory of Evolution Judged by Reason and Faith, trans. Francis O’Hanlon (Joseph F. Wagner, Inc.: New York, 1959), 135–37.

[3] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1, q. 45. art. 1.

[4] Ibid, Part 1, q. 45, art. 4.

[5] St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Ch. 10.

[6] Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 15.

[7] Vatican Council I, ch. 2 On Revelation, 9.

[8] Benedict XV, Spiritus Paraclitus, 19-26.

[9] Lagrange, Historical Criticism and the Old Testament (1905), Lecture IV, pgs. 134-135).

[10] Haeckel, Answer to the Jesuits (1911), pg. 4).

[11] Assmuth and Hull, Haeckel’s Frauds and Forgeries (1915).

[12] See Darwin, Letter to Ernst Haeckel, 29 April 1879, for example.

[13] Haeckel, The Evolution of Man, preface to the 1st Edition, 1874.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Darwin, Letter to C.E. Ferguson, 12 January 1880.